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Georgetown, Texas – Watch cowboys drive a herd of longhorn cattle from San Gabriel Park to Main Street in Georgetown in a downtown celebration on Saturday, September 29, recognizing the city’s location on the historic Chisholm Trail, as well as Williamson County’s rich cattle driving and raising heritage. The event begins at San Gabriel Park and concludes on the square in Georgetown, with entertainment for visitors of all ages including live cowboy music, food, trick roping show, western craft exhibitors, petting longhorns, chuckwagon displays, pony rides, western authors, historical trail drive re-enactors and exhibits by modern-day cattle raisers. An authentic chuckwagon cooking contest in San Gabriel Park kicks off the event (8am to 3pm), and visitors can sample authentic trail drive cuisine.

The event follows in the tradition started by Williamson County trail drivers in the 1860s. The father of the Longhorn Chisholm Trail, Peter Preston Ackley, coined the phrase “Up the Chisholm Trail.”  Ackley was a famous trail driver who made his first trip up the trail to Kansas as a teenager in 1878. Ackley spearheaded the trail marking movement in the 1930s in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, with the goal of placing a “Going Up the Chisholm Trail” marker in every county that the trail passed through. One of these historically significant trail markers still stands at the southwest corner of the Courthouse lawn and is featured above as a tribute to Williamson County trail drivers. 

Texas cowboys drove more than five million cattle and a million mustangs up the Chisholm Trail from 1867 to 1885, making it the largest migration of livestock in world history.  Some of the earliest cattle drives originated in Williamson County, and this heritage continues today with modern day Williamson County cattle raisers pioneering the “New Chisholm Trail,” the I-35 corridor.

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• TDM Sales Company

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